A lesson for me: you can have worries, yet make beautiful things. And the inspiration comes from Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827), a composer who inspired music itself.
Not just me, Beethoven's life inspired another popular composer between 1898 and 1899, the Englishman Edward Elgar. Persist despite worries; here's what happened:
"'I was very down in the dumps; everything seemed to be going wrong. I was feeling very wretched... and told him (his friend Jaegar) I was going to give it all up and write no more music.' Jaegar had leapt to the defence: 'He said that Beethoven had a lot of worries, and did he give it all up? No. He wrote more, and still more beautiful music--"And-that-is-what-you-must-do"'" [Edward Elgar: A Creative Life]
"Jaeger... sang the theme of the second movement of Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 8 Pathétique. Elgar disclosed to Dora (a close friend) that the opening bars of 'Nimrod' were made to suggest that theme. 'Can’t you hear it at the beginning? Only a hint, not a quotation.'" [wikipedia]
August Jaeger was Edward's close friend. They loved
